Raine looked at Killik with a cringe. "Please, no bombs in the reactor room. We don't want something to go boom and cause a much larger boom, which, in turn, will cause a boom larger than most people see in their lifetimes." Raine said, illustrating the fact that Killik's thermal detonators could easily detonate the reactor, which would cause a chain reaction and destroy their ship, and possibly the behemoth aswell.

Crouching low to the catwalk that the laddershaft let the off of, Raine crawled up to the edge and peeked over the bottom of the railings.

The reactor hummed steadily. A good sign, for sure. The boarding tubule, however had seemingly already penetrated the engineering room. Raze'el was the only living being present, although there were a number of pirate corpses littering the area.

"Well, I suppose that threat is already delt with..."

((Edit: Very well, although we were making our way to the "reactor" room before your post. I assumed the "engine" room would be seperate, but they are apparrently one and the same.))

(( *cough cough* ))

(( Edit response: From Azisien's descriptions, the reactors double as the engines' power supply. Since the engines themselves are most likely large ion reactors, they probably need to be located very close to the main reactors and mounted horizontally (or be part of the reactors themselves), which means "reactor" and "engine" are basically the same thing in this instance. It makes more sense also, because it would be horribly innefficient to shunt power from a reactor source to the other end of the ship, just to reach the engines, when you could mount them closely and bleed the engines directly off the main power supply. ))

OOC: There were 37 hostiles, 5 in the stingrays, which makes 32 hostiles on the Behemoth. I went through and crossed off all that were killed (and in some cases vaporized) or knocked unconscious. There are 14 pirates left in the ship/on the Behemoth. We should probably come to an agreement that a FEW actually pilot the vessel, a minimum of 6 I'd say. That leaves 8 more, most of which would probably be on the Behemoth itself (the chaingun lady, the silk boy, muscle to guard the Behemoth, and whatever left probably in Deck 1 of our ship which is currently locked down).

IC:

The infantry attack on the ship had been thwarted, leaving Adam thoroughly impressed. He hadn't been in many hostile situations with this crew before, so this was one of the first times he had seen them fight. The internal sensors read that there were two pirates on Deck 1 and three on Deck 3. Unarmoured and outgunned, according to the deep scans.

"JEN, give me some good news?"

"There is little. I have hacked through three thousand firewalls. At this rate, the battle will be long over before I attain systems control of the vessel. However, I have coordinated with Robert to extend external sensors through the docking bay force field everytime it resets its field polarity."

"Like a very crude, very slow radar. But we'll know more about the ship soon." Robert announced.

Killik put away his thermal with a little sigh and followed Raine down into the reactor room, where he glanced around calmly at all the corpses and Razeal, before looking over at Raine with his lip curled into an annoyed half-sneer. "You made me run... for nothing..."

After a second of glaring he just shrugged and sighed, before walking over to the boarding tubule, pulling out another thermal detonater. "I'm going to go get us a Behemoth."

"Well, it's not *my* fault that these pirates died before we got here. I thought you pirates were supposed to be good at this sort of thing?" Raine sighed, looking over the catwalk and waving a salute-like gesture to Raze'el.

"Ah. Perhaps that would be best." Raine said to Killik, "I'm sure we can crew a mothership, no problem." she thought sarcastically, "although it may fetch a pretty penny."

She followed Killik, who, apparrently knew what he was doing. "I suppose I should learn piracy from an expert then." she said with a sly grin.

The vehicle proved no less resistant to the torrent of ballistics as the lockers. Jim dove from safety to safety, bullets scorching the air behind him as he ran.

While running, he risked slowing down to take the bombsling launcher from his back. He was rewarded for this action by having a few bullets skim across his back, cutting up his shirt and pants.

"Lady, you are so lucky I have 30 identical pairs of clothing." He loaded the weapon and did a quick check of range. The woman smiled as her target stood still, and spun the chaingun. But as she did so, a projectile shot out from him and began to rap around the cylinder of her chaingun, two balls on the ends of the projectile glowing red as they spun around the cylinder. She leapt away as the two finally touched, and the explosion reduced the weapon to a heap of metal and sent her flying into a wall.

"Boom boom baby!" James laughed, rubbing his gun. He looked about the room.
<Wait a second. Wasn't there another pirate?>

Jim felt a gun press against his head go 'click'. It's holder was the cloaked figure, who had let his comrade work as a distraction while he remained hidden in wait.

Jim dropped his gun.

"First sensor pulse is away...and there's the data. It worked, but we're locked out of the Behemoth interior for another thirty seconds or so." Robert reported. "Raine and Killik are moving off this ship. Looks like Jim is in there...shit...he's got hostiles around him. There's another shielded section of the ship, on the top, it's probably the bridge. Sensors can't penetrate it, they've probably locked it down. Two other hostiles outside the bridge, looks like they've taken up a defensive position."

The bridge shuddered violently from an explosion behind them, Adam and Robert glanced back. Adam looked back down at his console. "They are through the first blast door, that leaves one more between them and us. Got a weapon?"

"On me? No, I didn't go to the armoury. But the bridge should have some standard weapons stored."

"There are eight SigmaTech concussion rifles stored under the tactical console. Adam, I have now hacked through four thousand firewalls. At the current rate, factoring in their resistance efforts, I will gain control of their systems in forty-eight minutes. Would you like me to continue?"

"No, it was worth a shot though. How fast could you gain control of the ship if the force fields weren't active?" Adam wondered.

"Three minutes. They do not seem to have a resident AI, nor do they have up-to-date security systems."

Adam stared at the viewscreen on his console for a few seconds, watching the green dots, labelled as various crew members, move about the ship. Then, he got an idea. "JEN, instead of hacking into the whole ship, could you gain control of secondary systems?"

"There are less security parameters installed in most secondary systems. It would be easier to gain control to them."

Adam smirked. "Good, seize control of those tubules." He tapped a few buttons and forged a simple text comlink with Raine's heads-up display.

He sent the message: You guys want a lift? Jim's in trouble, and the bridge is heavily fortified.

Raze'el just smiled as they moved off without him, not giving him so much in the way of acknowledgement except for Raine's salute. They left down through the tubule and disappeared, while Raze'el looked about the room, and decided to wait there and gaurd it... in case they missed one.

As he waited he put the gun back inside his coat and happened to glance at the upper walkway, where he could see the woman's body through the grating. Probably should restrain her...

***

A few moments later he was leaning against an opposite wall overlooking the engine and the tubule entrance, one unconscious and well-bound pirate woman at his feet, and his arms crossed.

Any minute now we should be done...

"Learn piracy, eh? I didn't know you were into that kind of thing," Killik said as he turned a dial on the top of the thermal he had pulled out and walked calmly toward the entrance of the tubule. He set down the thermal for a minute, kneeling down. "First lesson is to always make sure you're not walking into an ambush. The best way to do this is through making sure everything is already dead when entering danger areas."

He pulled out his ballistic pistol and dropped out the current clip before replacing it with a new one, marked by a red band. "Rubber bullets," he explained before pulling a roll of tape out of his pocket and using it to secure the thermal detonator to the barrel of the gun.

"Now, with normal explosives, this would be tantamount to suicide, but thermal detonators aren't set off by concussion. It requires a very specific electrical charge to force the chemicals to explode... but hey, you're the weapons tech. You probably know more about it than I do. I only know because one of my crew mates taught this trick to me. Anyway... we don't know what's on the other side of that so..."

He pointed the gun up the tubule at an angle and then depressed the switch on the thermal. A small circlet of red lights came up before reducing itself to a mere ten. One of them fizzled out while Killik aimed, but no more had the chance before he fired. The tape was, naturally, shredded, and the rubber bullet sent the thermal all the way through the tubule, and bouncing about on the other side. In the next ten seconds, he very calmly reloaded his pistol with his hollow point rounds and put away his tape.

The explosion could be heard, but thanks to the angle of the shot, the thermal had landed safely in the hallway beyond the tubule, and very minimal amounts of backlash had headed back down it. No where near enough to damage the device or present any danger to the people within the hallway.

After that he climbed in, turning back toward the diminuative Raine as he did so. "Before we get in there, the second rule is to only take prisoners if they're worth more to you alive than dead. So, shoot to kill unless you think someone has good information...or you have other plans for them. Especially against other pirates. I know Artemis said not to kill them, but a living pirate is a pirate who's going to try to kill you. Maybe rape and kill... if they're into midgets," he finished with a bit of a grin and a joking tone, before climbing into the tubule in earnst, and holstering his ballistic pistol, in favor of the energy variety and a free hand.

The silk figure pulled out a device and turned the elevator on remotely. "It looks like I've made my best catch yet." The cloaked figure gloated in a hollow voice. "You sure of that?" Jim queried. If the figure had known how to deal with Jim, he probably would have stopped talking. But this one didn't.

"Oh yes, the 7 digit number on your head will help give me an early retirement. It's always a matter of being on the right ship at the right time."

"I think you may have me mixed up with someone else, pal."

"Sure I have." The hollow voice said sarcasticly. "Well that's enough talk from you." The man grabbed the butt of his gun and bashed it down on the back of Jim's head.

If life was a video game, in the terms of Halo, It would have looked like this

Health:70
After the hit:
Health:60.

"You need to start doing some pushups, jackass."
Jim quickly turned around. Jam leapt from Jim's pocket as Jim made a fist. Jam grabbed on to his arm and flew forward as Jim punched, adding to the force of the punch.

The cloaked figure was knocked pretty far, but wasn't out. Jim dove for his handgun, the closest weapon after the figure disarmed and toss aside his weapons. The Figure pulled himself to his feet and fired. Jim grabbed the gun and rolled, as the projectile barely missed him and imbedded itself into the ground.

A tranq dart.

Jim pointed his gun at his opponent. The cloaked figure froze. Then the doors slid open, and the figure ran. Jim opened fire on the running figure as he ran out the door, and Jim gave chase with Jam flying behind.

"Oh DOOD! He be running for zee Escape pods." Jam reported, and Jim sped up to see the Figure at the end of some railing over looking the pods, which were shielded Bubblepods. The figure looked back, and quickly leapt over the railing and glide over to the escape pods.

Glide? Emerging from the folds of the silk cloak were fleshy wings that allowed the figure to gently land atop one of the pods and scurry over to the open button. Jim opened fire but his bullets ricochet'd off the pod. Then the pod turned on, and a metal hatch rolled over it. The hatch on the other side opened up, and the Bubble pod went out into space.

"What the hell was that all about?" Jim wondered, scratching his head. "Feh, probably nothing. Nothing to worry about." Jim said as he walked back to the elevator to retrieve his other weapons.